It Must Be Tuesday
by SilverKitsune1
Summary: Xander begins to notice the strange pattern evil seems to follow in Sunnydale
1. Default Chapter

Authors Note: Buffy once makes the comment in, I believe it was the episode "Once More With Feeling", of "So..Dawn's in trouble. Must be Tuesday." This made me wonder, if anyone else may have noticed the odd things that seem happen on Tuesdays in Sunnydale. I'll admit that I understand that some episodes cover more then just one day of time, but go with me on this. It's a bit strange. Read and reply if you wish, criticism is greatly accepted, flames will be used to make s'mores.

Disclaimer- Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters and situations are owned by Joss Whedon and I believe UPN.  

          Rating: PG

It Must Be Tuesday 

Xander had started marking down the Tuesday's sometime around his junior year as a joke. Something he'd said in a passing comment to Willow, as they'd picked through the 50% off calendars at Barnes and Noble. 

"Evil doers of the world," he'd said while holding up a battered looking kitten calendar, "must put out their own calendar every year, just to make sure that none of the same two demons attack us on the same night."

The night before had been a rather bad one for the Scooby gang, and as Xander had spoken, he took notice of the fading yellow bruise on Willows cheek and the bandage still wrapped around his own right hand. 

 "I bet it's something tasteful," he'd continued. "Nice glossy photo of an evil slime demon at the top, evil holidays marked up in the bottom. Something that says, 'not only am I evil, I'm organized.'"

Willow had smiled at him, giggling as she pawed through piles of glossy covers.

"Not only that," he'd said this time holding up one with Dilbert gracing the cover. "I bet all of the Big Bads of the world call one another, and make out schedules of who will be attacking when. Just so they know not to waste an, oh- so -brilliant, plan on a day someone else will be blowing up the cemetery. I wonder if they try to make out evil patterns."

"Evil what?" Willow had asked, still giggling.

"You know. Like how extremely bad things can't take place until the day all of the planets are aligned. Maybe there are specific days of the week that make evil more powerful, and maybe, oh just maybe, they will fall into a pattern that is just waiting to be discovered." 

Then, because all calendars had been cheap, and because he loved doing anything that kept Willow laughing, he had bought a brand new Snoopy calendar. Tearing off the plastic, he'd made a big show of drawing a little Zombie boy in box marked the 12th of January. In between Willow's giggles, he'd babbled on about how he was going to be the one to crack the evil doer calendar.  The 12th had been the day before, the day where the health class assignment had turned out to be a lot more complicated then keeping himself from eating his egg child, and it had been a Tuesday. 

For a while it had been their private joke. Whenever they would stumble home, exhausted from helping Buffy destroy whatever Big Bad had slithered into Sunnydale that night, Willow would poke him in the ribs and remind him about the importance of marking down this attack on his calendar. It was up to him and Snoopy to solve the puzzle evil had created, their task to find the pattern that the monsters were destined to fall into. He in turn would laugh with her, throwing his arm around her shoulders glad to have survived one more night on the Hellmouth. 

It would only be later, when he struggled out of torn jeans and ruined shirts that he would keep his promise, marking the days on which they had been attacked. Nothing big, no large round circles that muscled into Monday's and Wednesday's spaces, or huge red X's that announced to the world what he was trying to keep track of. Just small little check marks thrown anywhere in the 1 ½ x 1 ½ inch square with whatever writing utensil he happen to grab.  It became a ritual after a while, as important as brushing his teeth and something that kept him awake at night if it wasn't done.

A little less then a year had gone by before he'd begun to notice that his crack about an evil pattern actually had some weight behind it.  December had come, and sitting on the top of his bed, the calendar in his lap, he'd been flipping through the pages searching for a picture of the famous Snoopy dance to use as part of his card for Willow. He was sure he had seen it, but each flip through had proved useless. Xander was stubborn though, and convinced that the page he was looking for was just stuck to the back of one of the others.

 Willow's clumsily wrapped Hanukah present had been at his feet, and he brushed over it with his socks trying to push away the very difficult and confusing feelings he and Willow had been fighting against these last few months. Almost on the verge of giving in and heading out to Hallmark, Xander had given in to one last flip through, when he began to realize that the marks thrown onto the squares were beginning to bother him.  It was the same way  he way it would have felt if after a history test he'd looked down, and realized that every answer was marked true. He went back, starting in January, and working his way forward. The joke about evil scheduling had long grown stale and been replaced, but seeing the markings made in each month brought it forward again out of the banks of his memories brushed off and polished over.

          Xander had not marked every single attack. The brief encounters with vampires that Buffy had every night were more annoying then anything else, and he couldn't join Buffy on every one of her patrols. The large ones though, the ones that still caused him to wake up sweating from nightmares, his face wet and sticky from where he had been unknowingly crying, those he had always remembered, and as he flipped he began to notice a pattern. A pattern so simple, so absolutely witless that if he hadn't been so nervous at this latest discovery he would have found it hysterical, because who in their right mind would have ever expected to see a repetition of Tuesdays. From the very first marking, to the one he had thrown on last week, all Tuesdays. Just one more of Sunnydale's great cosmic jokes.

          Unfortunately, it seemed that he was the only one to have any faith in his discovery. Buffy had only rolled her eyes and smiled, something that didn't quite reach her eyes, but all of her smiles had been doing that lately, looking past all of them at some secret only she could see. Willow had nodded, looking skittish and shy at the two of them being alone together, and he's left quickly when Oz entered the room. Cordelia had called him crazy, but then again he hadn't been expecting much from Cordy, and Faith had laughed in his face. Even his pleas to Giles had earned him nothing but a sigh, and a ritual Giles glasses cleaning.

          "Xander, the very fact that you haven't been counting all of Buffy's patrols proves this theory wrong." 

"But the big things," he'd argued weakly. The Master, the day Spike first showed up, the invisible demon that killed all those little kids at the hospital, the talent show, remember the talent show you had to supervise? That was held on a Tuesday, they were all Tuesdays."

He'd almost brought up Miss. Calendar's murder, but stopped himself.

          "Xander, I'm sure it's just a coincidence," Giles had answered with a sigh, and that had been the end of it.

          He bought a new calendar, and kept on marking down the attacks. Monday nights he would sharpen extra stakes, keep the phone near his head, and lie in bed, preparing himself for whatever horror Sunnydale would be throwing his way the next day. 


	2. It Must Be Tuesday: Graduation

It Must Be Tuesday: Graduation

Disclaimer- Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters and situations are owned by Joss Whedon and I believe UPN.  

Rating: PG

Special thanks to my wonderful Beta the Pie Nerd, and to all of those who reviewed this fic and asked it there was going to be more.

Monday nights, just before he'd fall asleep, Xander played a game with himself. As he would lie there on his back staring at the ceiling, and watching the lights from passing cars trail across his walls, he would imagine the absolute worst thing that could happen the next day. The way he figured it, if he aimed high (not end of the world high mind you, but close to it) then anything he would get would be at a much more manageable level. He was often shocked at how many things were much worse then anything he could dream up.  

They didn't believe him, and that was fine. For Buffy and Giles who saw a vamp a night, he supposed it was little hard to believe that Tuesdays would have any certain significance. After he had gotten over the shock of seeing the long line of them parading down his calendar, he had found that it really wasn't so bad. He was a prepared guy, the one who was always geared up for the bad stuff to happen, and ready to pull anyone he cared about out of the way when all Hell broke lose.  As time went on though, Xander found himself becoming one of the few that really needed any sort of preparation. Buffy was becoming stronger, faster, and more agile with every passing training session. Giles as a watcher was always ready, prepared for anything with his knowledge of demon cults, demon languages, demon culture, demon victims. (Was it him, or did Giles really need a hobby?) Even Willow had found her place next to Buffy, easing into magic the same way she eased into calculus problems, or advanced chemistry.  Xander had found himself very comforted at the idea that in a tight situation his Willow would have something to fall back on. 

He didn't like to admit it, and sometimes was so embarrassed at the idea that he would deny that he had ever thought of it, but as those around him changed and he stayed the same Xander Harris, the Tuesdays had become more than just warnings, they had become possibilities.  In fact he'd begun to look forward to them, hoping that this would be the week that he would be shown something, anything that would give him a foothold in the group. Something besides being donut guy, or a hostage situation waiting to happen.

He wouldn't have been picky. Maybe he would pick up a useful demon language, or a nifty power. Maybe Giles would discover he could be a perfect watcher in training, and offer him a more traditional role in the fight against good and evil.  Weeks went by though, and nothing happened. Time began to pass, and he went along with it. Not kicking and screaming as most had, but in a slow shuffle at time's heals. Always waiting, always watching, receiving nothing, and in the end finally accepting that nothing was coming.  He had grown out of the idea that he might be special, grown to accept that he was the only one to be utterly normal. At least that was what he told himself as he studied the last calendar he would own as a high school student. 

Graduation was tomorrow, a Tuesday of course. Big freaking shock. He wondered if the Mayor had any idea that the devil preferred to show up on Tuesdays. Or maybe he had noticed, but just didn't care. Mayors don't care about what dates things happen on, just as long as they happen. That's why they get secretaries. 

He put the calendar down, and stretched out his neck and arms. They were sore from the mass amount of library cleaning out he'd done, and he groaned. Somewhere in the back of his mind there was a little voice that was in the midst of a panic attack, and it shrilly reminded him that tomorrow there was a very large possibility that he might die. He ignored it though. The voice was not a new thing it just happened to be rather loud today. Besides, this fight was going to be different. 

"Xander I'm going to need what ever you can remember from your army guy skills." Those were Buffy's words, the ones that he had snatched up and held on to, to repeat as needed for the past few hours. They needed him.  Tomorrow he wasn't just going to be Xander, he was going to be General Harris. Even if they all got flattened by the Mayor he would have died needed, and as he shuffled out of his jeans and pulled on a t-shirt for the night he found that he could live with that. Tuesdays be damned. 


End file.
